Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes

Scholars are those who have read in books, but thinkers, men of genius, world-enlighteners, and reformers of the human race are those who have read directly in the book of the world.

Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy, wherefore Socrates has defined the latter as θανάτου μελέτη. Indeed without death men would scarcely philosophise.

But he will fear least to become nothing in death who has recognized that he is already nothing now, and who consequently no longer takes any share in his individual phenomenon, because in him knowledge has, as it were, burnt up and consumed the will, so that no will, thus no desire for individual existence, remains in him any more.

The word of man is the most durable of all material.

The shortness of life, so often lamented, may be the best thing about it.

Treat a work of art like a prince: let it speak to you first.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

What give all that is tragic, whatever its form, the characteristic of the sublime, is the first inkling of the knowledge that the world and life can give no satisfaction, and are not worth our investment in them. The tragic spirit consists in this. Accordingly it leads to resignation.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.

Ordinary people merely think how they shall 'spend' their time; a man of talent tries to 'use' it.

My body and my will are one.

The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others.

No child under the age of fifteen should receive instruction in subjects which may possibly be the vehicle of serious error, such as philosophy, religion, or any other branch of knowledge where it is necessary to take large views; because wrong notions imbibed early can seldom be rooted out, and of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last to arrive at maturity.